Skip to Content
  • Browse
  • Past Issues
  • Search

Arts and Letters

Wagner History

Wagner News

Inside Sports

Alumni Stories

Obituaries

Alumni Events

From the President

Feature Stories
Winter 2022
Winter 2021
Fall 2021
Summer 2019
Winter 2018–19
Summer 2018
Fall 2017
Summer 2017
Fall 2016
Winter 2015-16
Summer 2015
Fall 2014
Winter 2013-14
Summer 2013
Fall 2012
Summer 2012
Fall 2011
Summer 2011
Fall 2010
Summer 2010
Fall 2009
Summer 2009
Fall 2008
Summer 2008

Authentically Dani

SHARE
PRINT
BACK TO TOP
Authentically Dani
Mark Anderson ’69 – The Observer
Full Circle:

22 Dani Fava for page

Dani Fava ’00 is different. And she’s ‘beyond fine’ with that.

Alot has changed for Danielle Delgado Fava ’00 since her Wagner College commencement, half a lifetime ago.

Starting with her lawn care routine.

“I have a John Deere lawn tractor now,” Dani said. “My favorite pastime now is putting on my overalls and riding that thing.”

Dani Fava, who majored in business at Wagner College, is the head of strategic development for Envestnet, a 23-year-old financial technology firm with offices in suburban Berwyn, Pennsylvania.

For Dani, life in a historic, rural hamlet outside Philly is still a novelty.

“I was born and raised on Staten Island,” she told us. “I went to Catholic grammar and high school — very Catholic. Very traumatic.

“I was the only Hispanic person in my grade, and I was not out yet. I lived a great, big lie for a really long time.

“Even so,” she reflected, “I don’t know if I would have changed anything about my life, because I love where it led me.”

Dani’s college career started not on Grymes Hill, but at SUNY Albany. Discipline issues forced the freshman to return to Staten Island, where Wagner offered her a transfer scholarship.

“My dad was the only one in his family to go to college,” she said. “He made a nice career for himself, but his siblings were very much the opposite, just kind of bouncing around. I wanted the sort of stable life that my dad had, with a college degree, and I believed at the time that was the only way to do that.”

At Wagner, Dani was strictly a commuter student. “I just went to classes,” she said.

Her college career became especially challenging with her pregnancy.

“I stuck out like a sore thumb on campus,” Dani said, “and it made it a little awkward for me to make friends and have conversations. I tried to stay as ‘under the radar’ as possible.”

Through it all was her fascination with the world of business operations.

“I was very drawn to Wall Street, finance, accounting,” she said. “Actually, I loved accounting in college; I just understood math, any math-related economic business. I had some teachers that I absolutely loved at Wagner.”

Dani’s Wagner education combined with her inclination toward independent problem solving to guide the development of her real-world career.

“I don’t like to learn how to do something,” she explained, “I like to figure out how to do something and create my own solution.”

And that’s exactly what Dani did on her very first job out of college.

At the time she started work, she already had a young daughter she was dropping off at daycare very early each morning.

“I worked for an investment manager,” Dani said, “and one part of my job was to prepare reports every morning and go drop them on everybody’s desk. I had to get in early to get this done before the stock market opened, and I’m thinking, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ ”

And there was.

22 Dani Fava and family for page
Photo above, left to right: Camryn O’Neill, Jesse Goldstein, Frank Fava and Dani Fava.

“We worked on this [software] platform where you type in commands to get it to respond to you,” she said. “I learned how to get into the system, using its own language, and schedule jobs to run so that, when I came in, these reports would be sitting on the printer, all ready. All I had to do was put a staple in them and drop them on everyone’s desks.”

During diagnostic checks, the software manufacturer discovered what she was doing. They offered her a job, and her career in financial technology innovation was born.

That turning point in her life was followed, a few years later, by another.

Dani’s career was on a roll. She had married; a son had been born.

“I have to say, the moment of coming out was a turning point in my career,” she said. “Up until then, I was faking it — faking being in a happy marriage and having this sort of typical nuclear family. I lied to everyone, and I covered [up] every day. I tried to look the part, be the part, have the same kind of story as everyone else — and I hid everything about myself. That takes a lot of energy and planning … and living in fear sucks!

“After I came out and started living a more authentic life and sharing more with people, that’s when my career sort of skyrocketed. The weight of being something that I was not was just lifted — and then, all of a sudden, my uniqueness became my superpower.”

Stints in product development at Fiserv Investment Services and Citibank led to a long stretch at TD Ameritrade in fintech (financial services technology). In the course of leading highly engaging training sessions for hundreds of fellow fintech professionals on products she had helped develop, Dani became something of a video sensation, with a strong following whenever she appeared as someone’s podcast guest.

All of which led her to where she is today, living in a 220-year-old National Historic Register home and working close to the top of her field at Envestnet, putting powerful, hi-tech investment tools in the hands of more and more ordinary people.

Successful.

And happy.

“I have learned through trial and error that I can no longer cover up who I am,” Dani said, “nor do I want to, nor will I spend energy doing it. I just go out there. I am myself, and people accept me or they don’t, and I don’t spend any time worrying about it. I can work with anyone.

“I really believe my different point of view and my different experiences make me valuable to the company, to the industry. It’s what makes me different, or else I would just be like everyone else.

“And I’m fine — no, beyond fine — with that.” 

Winter 2022

  • Alumni Stories
  • Feature Stories
SHARE
PRINT
CLASS NOTES
OBITUARIES
CONTACT US

LATEST NEWS

image description

Songfest: Then and Now

For almost 70 years, Songfest has been one of the biggest events on campus. What …

image description

Heroines of the Holocaust

This June, a Wagner College symposium on “Heroines of the Holocaust” brought 50 scholars from …

image description

History Makers: Kinsey Casey ’02

Kinsey Casey ’02 was destined for a life in public service. And no wonder: Her …

image description

Uncommon Lives: Julie Hassett ’08

Julie Hassett ’08 is a body-paint, hair, makeup and cosmetic prosthetics artist who has done …

  • About the Magazine
  • Give to Wagner
  • Wagner Newsroom
  • Wagner Home
FOLLOW US

© 2023 All Rights Reserved